Tom Daley: Gone Cruising

Our Tom features in an ad for some god-awful cruise company.
It also features his fellow Olympian Ian Thorpe - who's just checked into rehab.
Perhaps out of mortal shame.
Gay Star News were so excited they re-printed the press release.
Then got an unpaid intern to gay it up by adding terms no gay man has used for 60 years - eg hunk, beefcake, eyecandy...
Gay journalism at its very best!

Fagburn: Marilyn & Me

I often spend my afternoons looking round charity shops.
It's my favourite thing to do.
I have measured out my life seeing other people's old coffee spoons.
I guess it's like how straight men go fishing or trainspotting.
Pleasantly idling, mind just for once relaxed, never knowing what you may find.
At last! Nothing to do.

Today I saw this round the corner - and screen-printed vinyl all stretched over a framed wooden canvas, proper gorge.
None of your rubbish.
It's up high and I can't see the price.
"How much is that?"
The man goes and gets a step-ladder.
I feel guilty already.
He peers; "£10".
"Really? You should charge more for that."
Do I really need this?
No.
Can I afford it?
No.
(At the back of my mind I worry it's just a gay cliché).
So I go.

So I go home and think about how much I love Andy Warhol ("He's your favourite modern artist. you stupid fuck...") and how great she would look in my dingy, dull, drab bedroom.
And how I really like the colours.
That red, that red, that gorgeous red.

So I go back to the charity shop five minutes later.
"Sorry," I say, apropos of nothing, but I'm English. "But I'd like to buy it now."
The woman at the till - she's new - she calls downstairs; "That gentleman's come back. He wants the painting of Marlene Dietrich."
The queeny man comes up the stairs and takes the picture down.
"We just put the price up... but seeing as it's you..."

I love Brighton.
Andy would be proud.
x

Babsi: We Are Everywhere

I got sent this and was asked to share.
This really is quite fucking astounding.
It combines the very, very greatest of pop music with the radical politics that has come to signify the anti-Sochi campaign - and delivers a fearsome deathblow to those cynics who think only apolitical posh gay zombies are getting animated over this.
Some of Tamara Handskneesandboompsadaisy's vocals are even in tune!
Surely we have found the gay-friendly Rebecca Black.
Take that Putin!

A Video: Miss Panti's Noble Call At The Abbey Theatre

This is everywhere, but it really is great.

Context!

RTE paid out a total of €85,000 to six people, including the journalists John Waters and Breda O'Brien of the Irish Times, David Quinn, head of the Iona Institute, and other institute members over a claim on the Saturday Night Show that they were homophobic.

And it now appears that some of the money will be going to a fund to commemorate Iona member Tom O'Gorman, who was savagely murdered in his Dublin home.

The claim of homophobia was made by drag artist Rory O'Neill, who performs under the stage name of Miss Panti, during an interview in which he referred to the debate on legislation for same-sex marriage and adoption...

Irish Independent.

It's Raining Men: Mass Movement

472 - Number of people who voted for nutty Tory/Ukip councillor David Silvester.

9,301 - Number of copies of It's Raining Men sold last week in "protest".

A much hyped campaign to get The Weather Girls' It's Raining Men to number one as an ironic comment on Silvester blaming the recent floods on gay marriage was not quite as dismal failure as he is.

The number one single by Clean Bandit sold 137,000 copies.

“I'm incredibly proud of the song getting to 31 in the charts,” says one of the campaign’s organisers, Darren Pop. “It makes me feel very humbled to be part of a community that will pull together to fight back against bigotry. It's very comforting to know that British people will always speak up and challenge comments like David Silvester made."

Fight the power!

Thanks to Marcus and Peter. No thanks to The Official Charts Company who "cannot disclose this information". x

Letter Of The Day: Edna Welthorpe (Mrs)?

I TOTALLY agree with the letter (TV's emphasis on gay themes is relentless Bristol Post January 23) highlighting the excessive attention given to gay/lesbian issues on TV programmes.

I'm quite sure the silent majority of the British public do not want to see this content on a nightly basis.

I'm proud to say I'm in the "No" camp on this matter.

It's about time the Government regulated the broadcasters more stringently.

Of course, this is unlikely to happen, as invariably when the issue raises its head; the politicians will fudge the issue to avoid losing the "Pink Vote".

The broadcasters themselves, striving to appear politically correct, will continue to appease the gay minority.

There are those who say these shows are only depicting everyday life as it is, but I don't buy into that. For myself, I hardly ever come across members of the gay community in my daily life.

The public deserve much more family oriented shows, such as "Strictly Come Dancing".

I may not be the lightest on my feet anymore, but watching others perform gives me no end of pleasure.

I very much doubt that George Ferguson will comment on this matter as those abominable red trousers he wears are obviously a blatant attempt to woo gay voters.

Name and address supplied

Bristol Post. 

Wonderful.

PS Pink News nicked this and ran it without realising it's a piss-take!

Harry Styles: If I Wasn't Straight...

Harry Styles, of One Direction fame, has apparently paid plenty handbag for this "art".

It is by Hayden Kays. 

Now I'm no Brian Sewell, but I think it's rubbish.

Anyway happy 20th birthday yesterday, Sir Harry!

Here are his 20 best crotch shots...

Philip Seymour Hoffman: 1967-2014

46.

David Hockney: Splash!

Sunday Times.

"Eeh, by 'eck, put kettle on, I'm parched. I like smoking me. Smoking and bums. Pardon me, but I speak as I find. It's all about the lighting. Like that Caravaggio. I did that one on the iPad. Then I thought Bridlington or LA, and you know what... " etc etc.

Hockney first moved to LA when he was 27 and already a star, having ­created what was then known as ­British pop art. He used acrylic paint to capture the dazzling colours and the unending sunlight. He created a new city in our imaginations, a new kind of paradise. Most famously, there was A Bigger Splash, a swimming pool in which somebody has just vanished beneath the surface, leaving behind only the exquisitely painted white splash and a haunting feeling of loss. It was a modern version of a Van Gogh boot or chair, a portrait of somebody who isn’t there.

And here Hockney is, almost 50 years later, painting people who are most definitely there, and now peering at the surface of an LA pool, an old man in sweat pants, waiting for his masseur to work on his legs. Perspective is a lie, time doesn’t stop — but genius can make it linger.

SodaStream: Unpaid Advertisement

Katie Miranda Via Mondoweiss.

Happy Super Bowl!

71,000 Palestinians in the West Bank are not connected to running water.

Saturday Night Show: Homophobia

This proved quite the hit with our fellow Irish brethren last night.
An in-depth discussion on "homophobia" on one of Ireland's most popular TV shows.
I've put "homophobia" in inverted commas because apparently it may not exist.
Relive the love this programme generated on Twitter by searching #SatNightShow.
Britishers etc may watch it here.

PS The show also features Pussy Riot - or as the presenter calls them, "the girls"!

Thanks to Wolfgang and marvell78. x

Russia: Kiss Off

This week in Sochi, every celebratory same-sex kiss on the winners' podium, every one-man or -woman protest*, every rainbow flag waved and pro-gay rights slogan displayed is a gesture of solidarity for those desperately under siege in Russia. Such signals will also act as a timely reminder for the global audience of the Winter Olympics of the international pledge, that: "All human beings are born equal in dignity and rights."

The Observer editorial. 

Barf!

To be fair, apart from the twee headline and conclusion, this is quite a reasoned and - rarely - non-hysterical piece.

Do I detect the authorship of one Ben Summerskill?
It does big-up Stonewall a bit...

* Eh? Think a sub may have fucked that line to buggery.

Splash!: Bellyflop?

No, it's not James!

Peter Tatchell: Apart From Russia Not Being Anything Like Nazi Germany It's Just Like Nazi Germany!

Peter Tatchell compared the Sochi Games with the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. "The 1936 Olympics took place in an atmosphere of antisemitic hatred incited by the Nazi government. The 2014 Sochi Olympics echo that hatred, only this time the victims of demonisation are LGBT people. There are no Nuremberg laws or concentration camps, but the hateful anti-gay propaganda is similar to the antisemitism stirred by the Nazis in the early 1930s. How can there be normal sporting relations with an abnormal regime like Putin's Russia?"

The Observer.

Gay comedy gold!
You really could not make it up.

Good job they asked Saint Peter about this, cause obviously no other gay person knows more about sport or Russia.
Like a Russian or someone involved with sport, for example.

AMIRIGHT!!?

This comes from this article...

That'll be the Russian anti-gay gangs who notoriously film all their attacks and then post them online, then. 

Journalism!
Beats working.

PS One of my many legions of fans on Pink News writes...

That told her!

UND Another of our leading political thinkers adds!

Fight the power!!!

Film: All Things Are Possible

The Independent. 

A great piece by Paris Lees - which thinks about and asks why this doesn't happen, though the header makes it sound like it's going to be another 'Only A can play A!' foot-stamping whine.
Far from it...

Friends in casting tell me their first choice is to cast trans people in trans roles nowadays. What a shame we don’t have more established trans actors, or at least none on which Hollywood would gamble a big-budget film’s success. Until we encourage acting talent from diverse sources, that seems unlikely to change any time soon. So yes, watch Dallas Buyers Club and by all means enjoy it, but, when Leto’s on screen, keep an eyebrow raised.

Paul Flowers: This Sunday's Story About 'The Shamed Gay Crystal Methodist' ©

Shamed banker the Rev Paul Flowers aims to profit from his sins by becoming an after-dinner speaker.

He hopes for fees of up to £5,000 to tell business conferences about his lurid life as a vicar who blew a fortune on rent boys.

A friend told the Sunday People: “He always gave amazing sermons and people will pay a lot to hear him talk of his troubles.”
Sunday People.

Paul Flowers is the Sunday tabloids' gift that keeps on giving.
Not cause he's done something wrong, but because they know he's not going to sue.
A friend said!!? 
Is that really the best you can do?
A friend said; "Ya mama got a glass eye with the fish in it!"
And thus that is a fact.
FFS.

Francis Bacon: Threesome

Triptych, 1991. Starring Jose Capelo. Worth plenty handbag.

FRANCIS BACON gave $4m to a Spanish banker he had fallen in love with and painted in one of his most important works, according to a tape recording of the artist.

The revelation of his gift to Jose Capelo, who was less than half his age, has emerged in conversations with Barry Joule, a close friend.

In the tapes, Bacon refers to his sister, before adding: “You see, I gave her exactly the same amount as I gave Jose."

Joule asks: “Four million?”

Bacon replies: “Four million dollars. That’s over £2m, you know.” The gay artist hints at regret over his generosity to Capelo. “I often think how stupid, what a fool I was to have done it,” he says. “And then I suddenly think, ‘Oh well, there it is, it is done’.”

Portrait Of Jose Capelo, 1987. Not sure they were getting on so well here.

Joule said the recordings were made with the consent of the artist, who also gave Capelo two of his paintings and requested that the tapes were not made public for 12 years after his death, which was in 1992.

According to Joule, Bacon met Capelo, then in his early thirties, in 1988 at a dinner party for Sir Frederick Ashton, the choreographer. Joule had invited the Spaniard when the singer Freddie Mercury and dancer Rudolf Nureyev could not attend.“Francis was quite uptight because Ashton was holding court — because he was even richer and grander than Francis and both men fancied Jose,” he recalled.

Joule, who became the artist’s confidant, said Bacon became infatuated with Capelo. He was 78, however, and acutely aware of the age difference...

The Sunday Times - This story has been officially verified by the late Hugh Trevor-Roper.

Jose, Barry, Francis.

The Sun On Sunday: Bingo!

Gay marriage + illegal immigrants = FULL HOUSE! JACKPOT!!!

They come over here, faking their gay weddings, eating our swans, doing our underpaid menial work etc etc.

Sochi: So It's Come To This?

Some American idiots protesting against Russia at the Super Bowl! USA! USA! USA!

Everything that's wrong with gay politics right now summed up in one handy photo!
But this is not politics.
It's an outburst of feel-good collective hysteria - Dianabollocks!
'Let me show you how much I really care! Squish squish boo-hoo *sadface*'
Did you not realise these corporations weren't nice moral agents before?
Will everything be okay forever if big business now says they'll play nice about Sochi?
Ooh, les bourgeois!

PS First they came for the adorable stray dogs...
Stray dogs do tend to get put down, yes, it's not some RUSSIAN NAZIS DOG HOLOCAUST!!!

And finally... someone has started one of those stupid online petitions asking Coca-Cola to put a rainbow on their cans!
I'll type that again in case you read it and thought you were drunk or tripping - someone has started one of those stupid online petitions asking Coca-Cola to put a rainbow on their cans!
Surely a new high/low for gay apolitical passive-activist banality?

A Little History Of Gay Politics: From rioting outside Stonewall to this?

LGBT History Month: Imagine If They Had An LGBT History Month And No-one Cared...

This really is embarrassingly half-arsed.
Did you even know it was happening?
What is point?

Smith: Smith - Post-Nearly Man

"It's good being a Smith sometimes - you can get away with murder."

Russia: On US Hypocrisy

Controversy over a Russian law that prohibits advocacy of homosexuality threatens to overshadow athletic competition at the upcoming Sochi Olympics. Thoughtful world leaders, including President Obama, have criticized Russia for stigmatizing gay identity.

Many of these critics find it hard to believe that in 2014 a modern industrial governmentwould have this kind of medieval language in its statutory code:

●“Materials adopted by a local school board . . . shall . . . comply with state law and state board rules . . . prohibiting instruction . . . in the advocacy of homosexuality.”

●“Propaganda of homosexualism among minors is punishable by an administrative fine.”


●“No district shall include in its course of study instruction which: 1. Promotes a homosexual life-style. 2. Portrays homosexuality as a positive alternative life-style. 3. Suggests that some methods of sex are safe methods of homosexual sex.”

●“[I]nstruction relating to sexual education or sexually transmitted diseases should include . . . emphasis, provided in a factual manner and from a public health perspective, that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense.”

Amid the rush to condemn Russia’s legislation, however, it is useful to recognize that only the second quoted provision comes from the Russian statute.

The other three come from statutes in the United States. It is Utah that prohibits “the advocacy of homosexuality.” Arizona prohibits portrayals of homosexuality as a “positive alternative life-style” and has legislatively determined that it is inappropriate to even suggest to children that there are “safe methods of homosexual sex.” Alabama and Texas mandate that sex-education classes emphasize that homosexuality is “not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public.” Moreover, the Alabama and Texas statutes mandate that children be taught that “homosexual conduct is a criminal offense” even though criminalizing private, consensual homosexual conduct has been unconstitutional since 2003.

Eight U.S. states, and several cities and counties, have some version of what we call “no promo homo” provisions. Before the United States condemns the Russian statute’s infringement of free speech and academic freedom, it should recognize that our own republican forms of government have repeatedly given rise to analogous restrictions...

Washington Post.

FT Weekend: The Boy Who Collected Vacuum Cleaners

I blame my parents for my unusual interest. My mother says that when I was a baby, I would crawl around the house following her as she cleaned. When I was two, I went to a party dressed as a Dirt Devil MVP vacuum. It was the easiest machine to make a costume for and I liked the red make-up.

I’m 19 now and I own nearly 150 vacuum cleaners. I can tell them all apart just by hearing them – I can do that with most models. My collection is stored at my parents’ house in Adrian, Michigan – it was even bigger at one point but my father threatened to sell the lot if I didn’t clear some space. I keep a dozen favourites in my bedroom and the rest are lined up in our family room in the basement.

My first word wasn’t Hoover but I was mesmerised by vacuum cleaners from really early on. Even at school, I would take out the vacuum at break-time and start cleaning the classroom. I would do half the floor one day and then the other half the next. Sometimes they would let me do the principal’s office or anywhere else that needed a clean...

Kyle Krichbaum talks about his unusual hobby in FT Weekend.

Let's hope the young lad still finds time for a girlfriend.

You may not be surprised to learn Kyle is going to "major in musical theatre". 

Africa: Another Meaningless Map

BBC News.

Illustrating an article about Uganda and Nigeria.

"Boo! Africans! They don't play by our rules..." etc etc.

As ever - the question about the other countries is; how often, if ever, are the laws actually enforced?

The Guardian's 'DATABLOG' recently ran something of a classic of this meaningless kind. 

"Hold me while I weep for the misery of the gay world!" etc etc.

Lesbians and gay men are brutally oppressed all around the world, but printing charts about what the law says is patronising, lazy and tells us nothing.

The world's gay media set off fireworks last week as Northern Cyprus became the last European country to legalise consensual gay sex. 

Of course decriminalisation means something beyond a mere change in the law, but was anyone recently actually arrested for this?

Paul Flowers: The Appliance Of Science

Those of us outside the board of The Co-operative Bank can only guess at Paul Flowers’s results. Maybe he was INFP — introverted, intuitive, feeling, perceptive; or maybe the crystal-meth smoking Methodist who almost brought the bank to its knees was more ENFP — the E for the sort of extrovert who boasted of a “two-day drug-fuelled gay orgy”.

We do know one thing though: the results were impressive, because it emerged this week that his lack of expertise in finance was ignored by recruiters because of his performance in psychometric tests.

Psychologists say that the ubiquity of these tests in financial services recruiting, in particular the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, which assigns everyone a four-letter code and which one psychologist compared to the Victorian practice of phrenology, is “extremely vexing”, and not just because these tests don’t screen for drugs and financial incompetence.

City recruiters said that in many first-round interviews a Myers-Briggs test, which was created in the 1960s by two amateur psychologists who had read the work of Jung, is standard...

Times.

No idea.

Anyone?

You can take the nebulous Myers-Briggs Test here.

Apparently, I'm an INFP - introverted, a bit meh on all the rest - Wow!

Fagburn seriously doubts this was the main determinant of Paul Flowers getting the Co-op gig.
Or going to a "two-day drug-fuelled gay orgy".
Though if there's an entry test for them...